Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that shaped us, the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it.

Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network, and as always, I'm your host, Zach Cornwell.

Today's episode is taking us back to one of my absolute favorite historical eras, the Cold War. More specifically,

to the icy shores of the Soviet Union in the early 1980s. The last time we crossed paths

with Mother Russia on conflicted was in a huge four-part exploration of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

That series spanned years and continents, a twisted tangle of espionage

and extremism, spies, journalists, and freedom fighters. But the scope of today's episode will be

much narrower. Instead of exploring a decade-long war, we're going to be looking under a microscope

at the events of a single night. On September 1st, 1983, one of the most controversial events of the 1980s took place 35,000

feet in the air, over a lonely stretch of coast in the Soviet Union.

That night, a civilian commercial airliner, Korean Airlines Flight 007, inexplicably drifted 200 miles off course and into restricted

Soviet airspace. The next morning, the plane was at the bottom of the ocean, and all 269 people

aboard were dead. As families gathered at airports waiting for loved ones that would never arrive,

the international community exploded in outrage

and confusion. The world wanted answers. Was this an accident? Was it a hijacking? Was it pilot error

or criminal negligence? It took more than a decade to unravel all the answers, to assemble the facts,

and clear the fog of conspiracy, but eventually the world did find

out what happened to Flight Zero-N-7. And the truth, as one writer put it, quote, is cold,

merciless, and needs no embellishment. End quote. It's an incredible story, one about paranoia,

political tension, and personal frailty. It's about what inevitably

happens when we forget how to trust each other. But most of all, it's a story about how one

tiny decision, on top of another tiny decision, on top of another tiny decision, can compound

...